False Conclusions
by timeandcirque
Summary: Purely fictional & lame. The words Sinead would use to describe the Saga. But after a terrible tragedy causes her to raise her suspicions and she can only reach one possible conclusion, can she put aside her fear of anything less than normal to help what she thinks is a friend in need?
1. Chapter 1

I sat on the soaked grass outside my school, watching the rain pour down from underneath my hoodie, which i held over my head to stop my hair going frizzy and tangled from the rain. I knew i was going to have a damp patch on my school kilt when i stood up, but pfft, who cared? It was only my uniform, anyway, and it was better than standing, which was what i had been doing for the past hour. Waiting for the bus with Fiona.

She didn't need to wait with me, in fact by waiting with me, she was completely going out of her way. I didn't force her to or anything, i just asked. It wasn't my fault that she normally just did what i asked her to. That was how i thought of it, anyway.

"Oh my god!" Fiona suddenly whispered.

"What?"

"Ssh, not so loud! Darren and Steve are here!" I rolled my eyes. Like i cared. Basically, there were these books that Fiona always went on about (yeah, i know. Books-how lame please?) which i could practically quote by now due to the amount she talked about them. They were about vampires (again, i say LAME.), and the main characters were called Darren and Steve.

That's why she was obsessed with these two guys that sometimes got the bus with me, she reckoned they were the _actual _characters from the book. They were proper ugly as well. (The bus stop guys, not the book characters. Although from the way she described them, the vampires didn't sound much better to be honest. All ginger and scarred and ugh.) I could see that she was staring at them, could she make it more obvious if she tried?

"Ohmygod Sinead. Did you just hear what they said?" Apparently, she listened to their conversations as well. I sometimes wondered why i was friends with this kid. Saying that, she _was _my best friend. We always had a right laugh, when she wasn't obsessing over fictional vampires. Like one time, there was this drunk old hobo that came up to us and offered us some crisps that we had just seen him pick up off the floor...

"Sinead!" She interrupted my train of thoughts.

"Nope, i didn't hear them. What did they say?"

"The one called Darren..." she whispered excitedly. "He said _destiny." _

Yeah, because the fact that he used a word that millions of people use every day made him a vampire, did it?

"Whoa." i pretended like i was scared? Shocked? Amazed? Anything but really, really bored of this Darren Shan stuff, which was how i really felt.

"I know. Creepy, huh?" Not really.

"Totally creepy." i echoed.

She continued to watch Darren and Steve, until they got on their bus, and were out of sight, idly picking up a bit of paper off the floor and unfolding it, then chucking it away.

"Ew, Fi. You don't know who's, like, dropped that."

"Exactly. That's why I'm picking it up. But it's only an advert for some takeaway place." I laughed.

"What did you expect it to be? A winning lottery ticket?"

"A flyer to the Cirque, more like." Oh. Now I wished i'd never asked. "What?" She gave me a look. "You never know, if Des Tiny chooses you, you might one day be lucky enough to spot a slip of paper with the words Cirque du Freak printed on the top in big letters. Only fifteen pounds, it would say, last show is on Tuesday. And then you'd rush, you'd find Mr Crepsley, get blooded, fake your death, and voila! Become a creature of the night, just like that."

"Hey, hold on a second." I held up my hand to stop her talking, before she could get too engrossed in telling me the story I had literally heard a million times before. "Lucky? It would be _lucky _to become a vampire?"

"Uh, of course it would be. You would finally know what the world really was like, behind all the humany stuff."

"Ri-ight. No but seriously Fi, if this _actually _happened, would you go? I mean, come on? You would have to leave your friends, you'd have to cook and clean and slave away for the vampire. You'd outlive everyone." I started counting out on my fingers the reasons why I would hate to be a vampire. "Everyone would be scared of you, you'd have to drink blood, you would probably have to kill at least one person in your life, ugh..."

The look on Fi's face told me that she was serious. I could tell that whilst I named this list "Reasons why I would hate to be a vampire", she would more likely call it "Reasons why I would like to be a vampire", or even as far as "Reasons why I need to be a vampire." And again I wondered, why am I friends with this kid?

**Hope you liked it! :D it was...very painful, to say the least, writing horrible things that Sinead thought about the Saga, but i survived! **


	2. Chapter 2

_A month later_

Fi and i had always wondered what it would be like if somebody at our school died. I had always secretly hoped that it would happen one day, just so that i would know what everybody would do. I thought it would be exciting-provided i didn't know the person of course. I didn't want to be crying all over the place now, did I? That would be like waving a big flag to the teachers with 'HELLO I AM WEARING MAKE UP. WATCH AS IT RUNS DOWN MY FACE.' written all over it. And of course, i pride myself on the au naturale look.

But let me tell you, it was anything but exciting.

We were all called into the gym, for a special announcement. Rumours flew around as to what it could be, anything from people getting caught smoking, to the school closing down. (Although that was mostly the year 7s spreading that one of course.) And in amongst the rumours, i heard hushed whispers of 'where's Fi?' 'hey, have you seen Fi anywhere?'

That was too much for me. I couldn't face this, it was stupid of me to put on a front and pretend i could. I ducked into the senior locker room before anybody could see the tears rolling down my face. Fi had always said she had never seen me cry. Now she never would.

As i stared helplessly around the room, something caught my eye. Behind my tear-blurred vision, it looked like nothing but a pink smudge in amongst the grey and blue smudges of lockers and schoolbags, but i knew what it was. The book.

I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my blazer and reached out to pluck the book from where it lay-just underneath the locker which Fi and i shared.

"So that's where you were hiding." i breathed. "I thought we'd lost you!"

It was our book, our own personal burn book that we had made after watching mean girls for what seemed like the 74769593th time. Fi had bought the notebook, and i had printed off the pictures of everyone in our class.

Yup, there it was in big bold letters. 'This is Sinead and Fi's BURN BOOK! Do not carry on if you don't want to see the TRUTH! Written on 27/02/10 at 12:20 pm. Smiley face.'

"Hm." i half-laughed to myself as i flicked through the pages. It took my mind off everything, at least. Recalling us sitting in Frankie and Benny's, discussing which rumours to put in and which we should leave out.

"Hey-that's odd?" i thought suddenly. "I thought we had never written this far?" Yet on the final page, a note was written, in Fi's trademark scribbled handwriting.

"Dear Diary." it read. "I know this used to be a burn book, but let's pretend it's my diary, okay? I always wanted a diary. Oh man, i should have started with I've always been fascinated by spiders. But i didn't, which was really lame. Oh well. So, I'm Fi, and this is my story. "

"This is priceless!" i thought. "I _cannot _just let this pass me by. She actually wanted to write a diary? Ha. She will never hear the end of-oh." the realization hit me hard. How could i have _forgotten_? Was i that bad a person?

"Of course you aren't." the little voice in my head said to me. "Now stop your moping and read the stupid diary. It's what she would have wanted." So i continued. "Now, before I start telling the tale of my adventures, Sinead, if you are reading this-have a nice life. And Larten, if you are reading this-stop kidding yourself, you are illiterate. But whoever you are, reading this in the future, enjoy my diary. If it is future me, that has received this diary from a mysterious source, due to certain events involving Des Tiny, vampires, and faking my death, I am proud. (PS. Make sure you publish it-or else.) And on that note, I am stopping writing now, I shall let destiny unfold as it chooses to. X" There it ended. With an X. Just as if somebody had got a huge permanent marker and drawn a big X over Fi. There, your life is done, finished, you are gone, forever. It didn't seem possible.

But maybe that was the thing. Skimming back over the last few pages, I read and re-read one line until the words began to blur on the page. Maybe it didn't seem possible that she was gone...because she wasn't.

I stood up abruptly, shoving the book back underneath the lockers, but ripping out the important page. The page containing my last link to what had happened to Fi. And that one line kept repeating itself over and over in my brain, faking my death, faking my death, faking my death.

**Didn't have to be mean about any cirque-y stuff in this chapter, thank the vampire gods! And review, people, review! XD**


	3. Chapter 3

It had become a fixation in my mind now, ever since that moment that I found the book. I knew that Fi wasn't dead, I just knew it. What I didn't know was what to do next.

I spent my days in a daze. People thought they knew what was going through my head, they thought I was grieving for Fi. They left me alone, most of the time, which I couldn't believe. I thought that my friends were meant to help me or whatever, not cast me out and leave me to get on with it. Although I wasn't complaining, because I knew what was worse, those people that I had barely ever spoken to, coming up to me and asking if I was okay, if I needed to talk, when I knew that they didn't care, they just wanted the goss. I wanted 'the goss' too, I wanted to find Fi. I just didn't know how.

Come to think of it, I didn't know anything about this 'Cirque du Freak', other than it was a travelling freak show and had vampires or something performing there.

Even as I said it in my head it sounded ridiculous, like something out of a bad movie, but I knew I had to believe it, because what other explanation was there for the fact that Fi had faked her death?

I decided, that I had to make a start. And that meant one thing, reading the book that I had swore _never _to read, for health reasons. (My excuse being, it would harm my sanity to even look at a page.) I was now a woman on a mission. That lunchtime, I stepped into the empty school library, for the first time in at least two years, and looked around. D. D for Darren Shan, was what I needed to find. A-B-C-D-Ah! There it was!

I edged my way towards the books, but as I did so, I heard the door creak open, and one of my teachers walk in.

"Sinead? You're in...the library?" he said in surprise, as he noticed me standing there.

"Yeah...i was looking for my phone. But it's not here." Good excuse, Sinead. I didn't want anybody to think I was actually going to read, did I? I mean I had boasted for the past few years that the only book I had read was the Jolly Postman, back in year 2.

I stood there awkwardly with the teacher for a few moments, willing him to leave, but he didn't. So I was left with no choice but to walk quickly out of the library, leaving the Darren Shan books behind.

Unless, I thought suddenly, unless there was one closer to home. I knew Fi was constantly reading those books, so perhaps she would have kept one at school, for her daily vampire fix or whatever. And I was in luck. She had done just that. I stuffed the book into my bag, where nobody could see it, without looking at it, and walked away.

Later that day, when school was over, I sat on the grass where I used to wait with Fi for the bus, waiting until everybody was gone and the road was relatively quiet. Only then did I take out the book.

"_Cirque Du Freak." _I read silently. "_The Saga of Darren Shan." _That's so lame, I thought to myself, the author used his _own name _for the main character in this. Oh well, here goes.

"_Ive always been fascinated by spiders." _What? Who would be fascinated by spiders? They are vile creatures. No, Sinead, stop commenting on how stupid the story is and just read it, get it over with. So that is what I did. Well...

I managed to read at least two thirds of the book, but as I reached the part where that Mr Creepy guy's spider bit Darren's friend Steve, I stopped, and looked down at the book, and then dropped it, to look at myself, in the mirror-like screen of my phone.

"What are you doing, Sinead?" I told myself sternly. "Is this what your life has come to? Wake up kid, and deal with the facts. Your friend is DEAD. D, e, a, d, dead. And now you're-what-trying to convince yourself she's alive? By pretending you believe in all her vampire rubbish? Get a grip. You just have to accept she's gone. Prove to yourself that you know she's never coming back." I nodded at myself in the mirror, and wordlessly, silently picked up the book, and ripped it into pieces, tearing out page after page and scattering them into the alley behind me, where nobody would see them.

I held one last page in my hand. Page 139. I glanced down and read the line which began "_Mr Crepsley mused, tugging at his chin and stroking his scar._" Oh, that's handy to know, he has a sca-"NO". I told myself firmly. "For the last time, this dude IS. NOT. REAL. Therefore he doesn't have a scar, because he doesn't have a body, _BECAUSE HE DOESN'T EXIST!" _I threw the last page on the floor in disgust.

A man on the other side of the road to me stopped and stared. Had I said that last bit out loud? Perhaps I had, oops. Oh well, at least I had got it out of my system. I finally had regained my grasp of the real world, that was good to know.

What wasn't good to know, however, was that the man who had stared when I shouted out loud, now appeared to be following me.


	4. Chapter 4

He kept pace with me all the way along the road, despite the fact that I changed the speed I walked at more times than I had changed my hair colour in the past year. I could just sense that he was watching me, following me.

As I turned a corner, I stopped, expecting to see him stop too, a couple of steps behind. But to my surprise, when I looked behind me, he had disappeared. After making doubly sure that he was absolutely nowhere to be seen, I breathed a sigh of relief and set off with a new spring to my step.

It was dark now, and the lights at the end of each street were shining brightly, illuminating the street signs. Except for the one directly in front of me, I noticed. That one was obstructed by something. A figure. I hadn't got a good enough glimpse of the man who I had labelled in my head 'my stalker' to be able to tell whether these two people were one and the same, but I knew what the most probable answer was.

"I'm not going to just stand here and let myself be kidnapped or something." I thought. "I can deal with this." I began to make a hasty retreat back down the road.

"Halt!" the man called. Halt? What sort of person says 'halt?'

"I'm not _halting_." I yelled back. "Deal with it."

"I just want a quick word. That is all." Yeah, because that's totally why you felt the need to stalk me for so long, for a chat. As if. "I heard you mention a 'Mr Crepsley' earlier." What, is this guy from the Cirque du Freak fan club or something? Have I just gained a gold membership? Have they sent him to beat me up because i ripped up one of their oh-so-special books? Intrigued, I walked closer.

"Tell me, what do you know about him?" he asked.

"Uh, that he's not real."

"There's no need to play dumb. This is very important. We need as much information as we can get. Anything you know would be much appreciated." This was getting weirder and weirder.

"Who's 'we'?" As though he had been expecting this, the man pulled out an ID card, and handed it to me.

"Edgar Caldwell, HAVS" I read out loud. There was a picture of him, which was obviously from at least ten years ago, wearing a posh suit and bowler hat, the latter he was still wearing.

"Nice hat." I laughed. I couldn't help myself.

"It was all the rage back then- and now." he huffed as he grabbed his ID back off me and placed it back inside his coat. "And it's not HAVS, it's H A V S. Humans Against Vampire Secrecy."

"Sureee it is." I snorted. "And you're what, dedicated to ridding the world of vampires? With your little hat on? Vampires everywhere quake at the mention of Edgar Caldwell. Totally."

"Mock all you like, but I know you're hiding something." he spat, in a fail of an attempt to try and frighten me.

"Just. No. That's not scary mate. Just...never do that again."

"Okay fine, look. We know that vampires have been in hiding, unknown to most humans, for hundreds if not thousands of years. It's all in the books, if you look hard enough. We feel this is wrong. We feel that humans deserve to see the bigger picture, to know what is inhabiting their world alongside them. We just have to find some proof, so we aren't laughed out of the public eye. We have names, sure, but it's one thing knowing the names of these bloodsuckers and another thing finding them. Crepsley. Ver Leth. Uh-the rest I can't remember right now. But if you see or hear anything, _anything_, relating to any of those two, call this number."

He handed me a thick business card, with his name, HAVS, and a telephone number stamped upon it.

"Okay. Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

He seemed satisfied with that, and with a final wave, walked away.

**Please review people, because i mean reviewing is fun these days, you get to click that posh button XD !**


	5. Chapter 5

Dring. Dring.

The light on my clock hurt my eyes as I squinted to see what the time was. Ugh. It was only half past seven. Clearly I had forgotten to switch off my alarm, for my lie in that Saturday morning.

Not that it would have been much of a lie in anyway, I had barely slept, and as I could see from the reflection in the television in front of my bed, I looked terrible.

I grabbed a cup of tea from the kitchen and placed it onto the contact card that that weird bloke had given to me the night before, (Thanks Edgar, for that handy makeshift coaster!) wondering whether I should go and right my wrongs.

You see, that was the reason why I had lain awake, tossing and turning all of the night. I knew that what I had done was pretty awful, on the scale of mean things to do to a friend. I mean, even if I was annoyed at myself for getting carried away and coming close to believing in all sorts of rubbish, there had been no need to rip up Fi's book.

Even when she was alive, to do something like that would have at least have earned me a day of being ignored, or a fight over BBM, or maybe an indirect status or tweet about how bad a friend I was. I would have expected nothing less, just as if she had done something similar to me. But now that she was dead...it was like an insult to her memory or something.

As I sat there, sipping my tea, I remembered snatches of the fragmented dream I had had, feeling worse and worse each second.

_I walked up the escalator of Topshop...why was I walking? Oh, it was out of order. Never mind, at least it was a bit of exercise. I spotted the dress I had been dying to buy for so long..._

Then the dream had jumped forwards.

_Suddenly I was standing in the changing rooms, wearing that gorgeous dress, and I heard a knock at the door. It was Fi, holding the exact same dress in her hands._

"_What are you doing? This is mine, I already have it." she gave me a weird look._

_I suddenly felt annoyed at myself for wanting it, looking in the mirror I decided it was ugly, it looked all wrong._

"_It's vile. Why did you waste your money on that? It was forty pounds. Who spends forty pounds on an ugly dress?"_

_Grabbing it from her I tore the material and ripped it into tiny little pieces._

_Fi stared at me, for a very long time, until she finally spoke, clearly and simply._

"_Because I knew how much you liked it, and I was going to let you borrow it." _

Even as I recalled it I felt sick inside. I had to go and...what? Hope that the book would still be there? It was worth a shot.

I was halfway to the alley when my phone buzzed. It was a text from Carmel, who, like most of my friends, had hardly spoke to me since- "Anyway, Sinead. Lets see what it says." I told myself.

"Hey. D'you want to go into town today? Haven't seen you in ages, lol. Usual time (11), alright? If you're not busy of course. C xxx" I smiled to myself as I read it.

"Sure thing babe. I need to buy that dress from Topshop! Outside the metro stop, yeah? Can't wait. Xxx" I replied.

"Aw, that was nice of her." I thought, still smiling. Her text seemed to have instantly in a better mood. That was what friends were for, after all. "I haven't been out anywhere in ages. That's my plan for the day sorted. I just need to nip into the alley and check whether those pages are still there, which I doubt, and then I can run and get the bus."

For as I looked at my phone it was fast approaching half ten. I would have to be speedy if I wanted to get to town on time-well-early enough so that I could be waiting casually at the metro stop with a starbucks coffee cup in my hand by the time Carmel arrived.

I put my phone back into my bag, and as I did so the sharp edge of Edgar's card spiked my hand.

"Ow." I muttered. "Why did I even pick that up, anyway?" I looked over at the bin across the road, meaning to run across and drop it in there, but it was too much effort. Meh. It wasn't important. It could just live in my bag with my empty gum packets, reciepts and bus tickets.

**Finally, its a bit longer, wooo! XD **

**Review! :)  
**


	6. Chapter 6

The alley was a lot more dark and dingy than I had remembered, which just made me even more eager to get out of there. It felt oddly isolated from the rest of the busy street beyond, which I did not like one bit.

I was never a big fan of isolated, unlike Fi. She probably would have enjoyed this, I thought to myself as I gingerly picked up each page of the book between my finger and thumb. (To avoid getting any dirt from the ground under my nails, of course.) She probably would have loved the atmosphere, the fact that there was nobody in sight. If she had been here, she probably would have come out with some comment about a murderer lurking just around the corner waiting to cut me up into tiny pieces, and then laughed and said something like "I wish, nothing exciting _ever _happens here."

Then I would have rolled my eyes, leant against the wall, (because of course if she was helping me, she would be the one to pick up the pages from the icky ground) and calmly told her that if her idea of exciting was murderers, she needed to be murdered herself.

Shaking myself from my thoughts, I looked down at the stack of pages in my hand, satisfied that I had collected them all.

Now, I wondered, what to do with them? As I scanned the alley, I spotted the cover of the book wedged in a doorway, as if it had been shoved there by an eager postman, and I knew what to do. I would go over there, collect that cover, and I would arrange all those pages in order, and I would go back into our school and place it back in our locker, and be done with it all.

No more vampires, no more stupid secret societies containing bowler-hatted men (if that was even a word.) I thought as I dislodged the final piece of "Cirque du Freak" from underneath the door. No more meaningful dreams, and definitely not another mention of Fi faking her death, that was for certain, I told myself sternly as I cautiously flicked at a wrapper or something that seemed to be stuck over the author's name.

I was going to get on with my life, and start being me again. Stop this ridiculous topsy-turvy cycle of reality and madness that seemed to be hitting me lately, I was-

I was practically-

_I was practically insane-_was my final thought as I realised what I had been holding-then the world blurred around me and I fell suddenly backwards, catching myself before I hit the ground.

Had I just nearly fainted? I wondered. I didn't even know that was a thing. I thought there was just either fainting, or not fainting, not some weird state of near collapse which I seemed to be in. What the hell just happened to me?

And then I looked at the wrapper-or rather-_the ticket-_and it all clicked into place.

_Cirque du Freak-Admit One. 04/03/11._

The date of Fi's death.

Either I was going insane-or the world around me was.

And there was only one way to find out.

Pushing open the rotting wood of the door that I had nearly collapsed against, I stepped inside cautiously, shining my phone around me as a makeshift torch.

Because somehow-in the back of my potentially insane mind, I knew that this decrepit old building had to be the place she 'died.'

It just _had _to be.

And somehow-with the help of my potentially insane mind- I was going to find out how and why Fi 'died'.

I just _had _to.

_**Meanwhile-In a secret location**_

Edgar Caldwell stared at the screen of his brand new GPS tracking device, that his mother had got him for his birthday, but which he had modified slightly for the optimum needs of H.A.V.S.

"The mark has entered Location 2.1" he called. "I repeat, the mark has entered Location 2.1!"

Location 2.1 stood for two things.

The 2 meant "Secondary Source", meaning they had reason to believe a vampire had been residing or hunting there, but no specific proof. And the 1-well, that was because it was only the first secondary source they had found that year.

At this, the three other members of H.A.V.S that were currently in the office paused whatever they were doing and crowded around Edgar's GPS device, although making sure not to cause Edgar's bowler hat to fall off in the process.

"We're going to need everybody working on this!" Edgar told them. "Get Paul out of Indonesia straight away-and tell Brendan his cruise is going to have to be cut short-we need all the help we can get, I can feel it! And Rory? Rory?"

Edgar Caldwell's son sat away from the others, in what the team referred to as 'the comfy chair', simply because all of the other chairs were so uncomfortable, eyes firmly glued to his phone.

It was stupid, he thought, how he was expected to sit around doing nothing in case his dad needed him for a mission-which _never_ was the case. In all his sixteen years he had never once been 'needed for a mission', and he suspected that was the way it would always be.

But he loved his dad, and so he put up with his lame hat and his crazy ideas about vampires, and his even crazier vampire obsessed colleagues.

However today was different.

"Rory!" Edgar shouted finally. "Come over here and listen."

Rory sauntered over, uninterested.

"I need you to get close to this girl." Edgar showed Rory a picture of Sinead. "Get as fast as you can down to Location 2.1 and pretend to be on her side. This is crucial."

"Can I take the bike?" Rory asked casually. It was worth it, if he was allowed to take the HAVS yellow motorbike out for a spin. Even if it was yellow, he decided.

"Rory. In moments of crisis, _always _take the bike. And remember-you don't know me, but you know _all_ about vampires. Oh-and your name is _not _Rory Caldwell."

Smiling to himself, the newly named Rory Lavigne strolled out of the secret base and hopped onto the blindingly yellow bike, telling himself that he was going to take this first mission by storm as he sped off towards Location 2.1.

**Yes, i named him after Doctor Who Rory :P and i was listening to Avril Lavigne at the time of writing this xD **

**Please review! :)  
**


	7. Chapter 7

**Rory**

Rory literally felt like the king of the world as he sat on that yellow motorbike, speeding down the road as fast as he could. Granted, he only had to drive two blocks-but that didn't matter to him. It was still more exciting than he _ever _thought his Dad's stupid vampire society would get.

What he was most surprised about though, was that this 'Location 2.1' was so close to home. He had been so used to all the members of HAVS jetting off to exotic locations that he had just assumed they were using the idea of 'we have located some vampires in...Barbados' or some similarly enjoyable country, to get a free location. But this...this was different.

It was if-for the first time-it seemed to Rory-HAVS was an _actual _secret society, with _actual_ aims, and _actual_ plans, rather than just a bunch of old guys past their prime with nothing better to do poring over GPS's (well-just the one GPS) and travelling the world.

And, he decided, that was a good thing. He felt like he was part of something.

"Now." he thought to himself as he parked his bike as close to Location 2.1 as he could get without being inside, and leant against it. "Now, to plan my story."

**Sinead**

My first steps inside that building were not good ones. I knocked over a stack of crates which fell over with a crash, and in amongst all that noise I could have _sworn _I heard the startled squeaking of some kind of rodent that had been dislodged from its sleeping place.

Urgh. I shuddered and took another tentative step, which was-pleasanter, to say the least. With the third step, I sent a hurried message to Carmel, telling her that I was "mega sorry babes" but I "had to go to some _laaaame _family party"...which brought on the worry, of course, that nobody on this Earth knew where I was. But I could cope. I'd done karate for a week back in Year Three, til i'd punched some kid for telling me my hair looked like Sideshow Bob and got kicked out.

And with the fourth and final step down that hallway, I emerged into a darkened room, filled with chairs arranged row after row, and...i squinted my eyes to try and make out what exactly was in the large space after the chairs finished and before the wall began...oh well whatever it was-it could _definitely _be used as a stage-a performing space.

Gingerly, I walked up and down the aisles, trying not to touch anything or knock over anything else which may contain creatures, while at the same time wondering what I was even looking for.

A clue, maybe? But what if...what if I already _had_ a clue?

The flyer-ticket thing, what if that was a clue? From Fi, even?

What if she wanted me to find her, wanted me to solve the mystery?

What if she thought that this was the only way she could get me to believe her ridiculous tales?

Then, without warning, a blinding light streamed into my eyes. I had gotten so used to the cave-like darkness, that it took me a moment or two to reconfigure my sight, rubbing my eyes furiously as I tried to work out what had caused the light.

Finally, I saw it. A door had opened. A side door, one that I hadn't even known existed. And in that doorway stood a figure.

**Rory**

After much deliberation, Rory had decided he was ready. Muttering to himself under his breath every ounce of his 'story'-aka Rory Lavigne's life-to make sure he didn't forget it, he had his hand on the doorhandle, ready to enter, when something caught his eye, something that he could use.

A plan already formulating in his mind, one that was certain to make his mission go smoothly, and gain the mark's trust almost straight away, he flung open the door, and caught his first glimpse of her.

**Sinead**

As my eyes adjusted more and more to the light, I began to distinguish the figure's features. It was a guy, a young guy, around 16 or 17 years old, definitely no more than 18 at least, I didn't know him...but...there was something about him that seemed familiar. He _was _pretty average looking though, the type of guy I wouldn't look twice at in a crowd, so I put it down to him just having one of those familiar faces that you see sometimes.

And he was holding something out to me, I realised. I couldn't see quite what it was, but there was no mistaking the fact that he was giving it to me.

"Is this the kind of thing you're looking for?" he asked, as I stood there blankly, staring at him like I'd seen a ghost.

Which was impossible, of course.

**Ooooh, what's this thing that Rory has found? Review...and all shall be revealed ^.^ No! Wait! I might even give you a clue, if you review ;) (oh, rhyming is fun XD) **


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